Supreme Court just buried a legal principle it invented — and Republicans noticed: experts

The Supreme Court's conservative majority has quietly abandoned one of its own legal doctrines — and it did so in the middle of an ongoing election, in the dead of night, and without explanation, according to two lawyers.

The so-called Purcell principle, which the Court has invoked repeatedly over the past several years to protect the rights of minority voters, holds that state legislatures cannot change their election maps when an election is too close. But that principle was just thrown out the door in Louisiana v.